American Lit: What's your thought?

What is my greatest failure in EL 405? There have been many failures and several heart attacks during my experience in EL 405, but the greatest failure I believe was my Filezilla scare. I nearly lost or thought I lost all my content from my term project final, but in actuality I saved in folder within folder in FileZilla so that the new updates were simply moved to a different URL than the one I was previously using. The value in this failure was it reminded me of two things that one should never forget when working on a major assignment.

1. Always back up your information to a second source in case of failure or any sort of technical difficulty.

2. Never assume nothing can go wrong because your assignment is in the home stretch and basically finished

Encountering my problem with FileZilla I was at the end of my project just putting on the finishing touches before I finalized it, and I thought to my self “I’m finally finished with this project” only to run into my biggest problem with it. I learned you shouldn’t become complacent or too relaxed when working on something just because you are coming to the end with it, because until it is turned in and out of your hands anything can go wrong. And that is exactly what happened to me. After searching for a solution on my own I turned to the Internet and videos on Youtube in search of an answer for my problem only to come up blank. While some of the stuff I found was helpful they did not solve my problem. After failing to find the answer there I turned to asking Olivia because she had more experience and skill with html so maybe she could spot the solution. In the end she couldn’t solve what was wrong, but noted an important little the computer kept giving us that led to solving the problem with the help of Dr. Jerz and the IT department.

And in regards to backing up information it is a key lesson and a fundamental thing we always say to people, but when you haven’t had a problem in a long time regarding losing documents you begin to forget the need or the importance of something as simple as backing up your work and progress on a regular basis.  If I had remembered to back up my content in another location I would have saved my self a heart attack and also would have some more time working on little things, instead of worrying how to get my lost information back.

This failure reminded me of two basic essentials one should always remember when working on major assignments, and no matter how small they may seem they truly are important concepts that one should not forget. They will save you from losing time trying to reclaim lost information, and will keep you from becoming too easy going just because a project is coming to an end. Keep going until the very end and never fool yourself into thinking nothing can go wrong just because you are coming to the end of the line.

FInal 405 video

Depth: In this section we do more than scratch the surface on ideas. In my entry Usability Test I link to my usability test video and I discuss the problems I need to fix in project. I collected the feedback from my testers and compiled it into changes I plan on making to my project. In my entry Coming to an End I talk about the skills i’ve learned from working on this project in relation to the course goals.

Interaction: In this section we visit our classmate’s blogs and comment on what they have written and ideas shared. On Katie’s blog I commented on how this term project has been a great experience.

Discussion: On my entry about my Usability Test I had a discussion with Olivia about my project and whether it could do certain things such as enhancing images in iBooks Author. Also in person Olivia and I sat down to work out some problems with filezilla in hopes of getting my site to update again.

Timeliness: This section is for blog entries that are early or on time. Entries in this section include Term Project Challenges, where I talk about the challenges I faced working on my project.

Coverage: This section is for blog entries that don’t go anywhere else. In this section I have my blog entry Problem Solved where I talk about how I was able to solve my filezilla problem.

Working on this term project has been a challenge, but one well accepted. There has been so much i’ve learned and pushed myself to do while completing my 405 project. Looking at the course goals my term project has helped me to achieve several of the skills we’ve journeyed to learn. This term project has helped me to:

• Learn how to understand, write, and create html/CSS pages by hand.
• Improve my research and analytical skills. I am able to search for solutions to problems I encounter along with identify problems and choosing the best solution.
• I’ve learned about technical writing, and the skill of attaining proper feedback using usability test.
• Learn from past mistakes and how to avoid similar problems using solutions I’ve found in the past. I’ve learned from my past failures and I know how to spot when a problem is similar to one i’ve encountered in the past and how to implement or create solutions similar to ones used before.

So earlier I blogged about a problem I ran into with Filezilla. Luckily the problem has been fixed and everything is back on track again. Apparently my site was out of memory and now that I know what was wrong, it was simply a matter deleting any excess content or files that were too large. Everything is back on track and ready to go.

You know when your finally feel like you’ve completed that big project your working on and the only thing left is to finalize it? You start to think its all over and nothing could possibly go wrong now. Well, I was wrong. Finishing my 405 term project my site has been updated and completed, and the only thing left to do was publish my updates. However, for some reason i’ve encountered some sort of technical difficulty stopping me from publishing. In my attempts to fix this problem I went to youtube and looked up tutorials of filezilla to make sure I was doing it correctly. After sifting through a few of those without any luck i decided to call in Olivia for help. Sadly this didn’t help either. She tried all sorts of things, but the site still refused to update. Let this be a lesson, there is no home free until the assignment is completely turned in.

While working on my term project, I encountered issues with coding padding and aligning images as well as floating images. After various attempts, I have been unsuccessful with centering an image. However, I have been able to align images to the left and to the right.

One thing I would like to add to my pages would be adding captions to images. Simply having the images without a caption does not provide a user with useful information about the images or the people shown.

Another design element I would like to incorporate in my page layout is a sidebar. A sidebar might be an interesting and visually appealing feature to each club page. The creation of a sidebar is ambitious right now. Hopefully, in the future it will be possible for me.

Below is a link to my usability test video where I had 2 individuals test my website and iBook.

Observing my testers interacting with my project there were issues that I noticed watching them play that I plan on addressing along with the problems they pointed out in my project. The biggest problem with my html website is the lack of layout. I am having a hard time organizing the content, and it is the first issue I plan on addressing. My tester pointed out that I should add quotes and activities for the clubs on their page. I have that content, but I have chosen to wait until I figured out how to fix the layout before I add it, so the page doesn’t become clustered with more confusion while I am trying to fix it.

The idea of adding a contacts page to each club page was a great idea I hadn’t thought of. After organizing the structure of the page I plan on having the contact information for each club added to the bottom of each page or in a box somewhere on the page.

As my users were going through my website I noticed they were trying to click on the images. I want to add something that when users click on the images they get bigger.

In regards to my eBook the background is very plain and I would like to add some color to some of the pages. To add some style to the pages I plan on filling in some of the text boxes with color and adding some color borders to give the page some feel of design.

This blog portfolio will look at the work I have been doing on my 405 term project.

Depth: This section is for entries that do more than just scratch the surface. In my entry Snag in Term Project I talk about a problem I encountered when trying to publish my book and how it has caused me to rethink my project and make some changes. This entry touches on how I tried to trouble shoot the problem, and how important testing early is when working on a major project.

Interaction: This section shows instances where we reach out to classmates’ blogs to comment on work they’ve done. I showed interaction when I commented on Olivia’s blog where she talks about her goals for here term project.

Discussion: This section takes interaction deeper so that we are not only commenting on what our classmates do, but we begin to share and engage each other about ideas. On Olivia’s I took part in a discussion talking about her website and how to stay organized when using Filezilla.

Timeliness: This section is for entries that are done early or on time. This section includes my What’s in my term project entry. This section also includes my entry Why HTML/CSS, where I talk about why I am using these programs.

Coverage: This section is for entries that do not fit anywhere else. This includes my demo entry where I walk you through progress I have made in my project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s784NCD2YUw

My term project demo